“San Miguel’s P1-billion rehab is highly suspicious because it comes alongside its push for its Aerotropolis and Expressway-Dike reclamation projects across Northern Manila Bay.” — KAlikasan PNE
“If anyone had rights over the Manila Bay, it is the Filipino people, and if it is to serve any purpose, it should be for the benefit of the general population, and not an elite few.”
What is common in the stories of the residents in various coastal sitios of Bulacan is that the “news” about their impending displacement is coming to them in trickles of information packaged in a threat.
While the government is riding on the popular call for cleanup of Manila Bay, harnessing free labor of volunteers for fishing out thrash in Manila Bay, it is, on the other hand, disproportionately blaming the poor and seeking their demolition in favor of reclamation plans and other real estate development.
That P735.6-billion reclamation budget from SMC seemed to have been enough for NEDA to ignore the thousands of people to be displaced and the ecologically critical vegetation to be damaged.
Its impact is long-term – once tons upon tons of soil are dumped into the sea, the loss of marine life and ecological balance cannot be immediately replaced – and the resultant flooding through water level rise cannot be immediately addressed.